Government to test Digi Yatra at major airports for international departures between October and December

The government is working to extend Digi Yatra, the facial recognition-based system now used by domestic flyers, to international departures, with trials planned at Delhi , Mumbai , Bengaluru , Hyderabad and Cochin between October and December, officials aware of the matter said.

“Delhi and Mumbai are likely to be the first airports to get the facility,” an officer aware of the plans said, while confirming the push by the government to initiate the scheme as soon as possible.

Passengers will gain only on the departure side in the first phase. The initial rollout is expected to focus on less-sensitive points such as terminal entry, security, and potentially boarding gates, while integration with immigration is likely to be taken up at a later stage, as the system is tested and its efficacy established, a second official said.

Emigration checks will continue as they are, and passengers on inbound flights will see no change. The ministry of civil aviation’s Digi Yatra policy document describes the immigration system as isolated from the Digi Yatra boarding system, with automated border control at departure and arrival envisaged as a subsequent phase. Unlike the domestic system, which uses Aadhaar -based enrolment, the international version will use electronic passports, the first official said.

A passenger holding an e-passport will be able to scan its first page and use a phone to read the chip embedded in the document through near-field communication (NFC), the first officer said. The photograph stored on the chip will then be matched with a selfie to create the passenger’s digital credential, which can subsequently be used for identity validation at different airport touchpoints.

All e-passports conform to international standards and carry certain biometric details. Till July 30, 2026, a total of 17,316,144 e-passports have been issued, according to a government reply in Parliament in August.

In the domestic system, the app receives Aadhaar e-KYC data, extracts a reference face from it and matches that against a selfie taken with liveness detection, with the resulting credential stored in a wallet on the passenger’s phone, according to the ministry’s policy document.

Software upgradation work is under way, after which an audit by the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) will be conducted, before the trials begin, the second officer aware of the developments said. The upgraded application is undergoing final testing, with a vulnerability assessment and penetration testing by CERT-In, as well as Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC), planned as part of the process, the officer cited above added.

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Rules for air travel, which are introduced by the civil aviation ministry, home affairs ministry and bureau of civil aviation, will have to change as well.